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apartment is even more apparent now. Scott’s
appreciation for the ability of music to tell stories
and to make social commentary is rare, and
the way in which he follows through on those
ideas is unique.
Scott’s company, like his music, has a comfortable
intensity to it—an easy warmth that
wins you over even when he’s on a mission to
change your mind about something.
Though gracious and polite, Scott presents
his point of view with the same confident
authority he puts into his live shows. And even
when what he says rubs folks the wrong way,
30 DOWNBEAT April 2010
his honest expression comes with a grain of
erudite salt.
Take his position that the neo-classicist
movement has such an overbearing presence in
jazz education and contemporary music that
young players are discouraged from trying to
move past it. Yes, that means he thinks it’s time
to find a new, post-Wynton Marsalis era.
But his new album is at its core a contemporary
riff on bebop and post-bop. And so was
Marsalis’ self-titled 1981 release.
“He’s very diligent in trying to learn and do
new things,” said McCoy Tyner, who featured
Scott as a special guest on the road in 2008.
“He’s considerate of the tradition of the music
and what happened before and moving ahead to
what’s happening in the future.”
Tyner’s right. The second track on Yesterday
You Said Tomorrow is a cover of Radiohead’s
“The Eraser,” but its washed production—courtesy
of Rudy van Gelder—gives it a sepia-toned
sound that matches the gritty quality of the otherwise
all-original album.
“I know he’s made some comments about
certain things,” Tyner says. “He’s opinionated,
but he has a right to have his own opinion. I give
him credit for that. It’s reflected in his playing.”
Tyner and Scott met in 2006, when the
young trumpeter was tapped for Tyner’s The
Story Of Impulse. Tyner heard something in
Scott’s sound that reminded him of “what cats
were doing in the ’60s,” as Scott tells it.
Scott began bouncing ideas off Tyner, while
Tyner shared with him new ways of thinking
about harmonics. Scott was already preparing to
record the material on Yesterday You Said
Tomorrow back then, and knew he wanted an
analog aesthetic—in Scott’s words, “visceral,
dirty type of recording”—that would meld harmonic
tension with some of the post-rock concepts
that appeared on his 2007 release Anthem.
The time he spent with the pianist seemed to
turn on a few lightbulbs on his creative path to
the new release.
“I like that spirit he has, his dedication to
music; he’s really in love with what he’s doing,”
Tyner says. “He knows the traditions that exist
in this music.”
Indeed, Scott came up steeped in a world
of musical traditions. After his mother,
Cara Harrison, heard her grade schoolaged
son correctly identify the sound of a coin
dropping to the floor of their New Orleans
home as “F-sharp,” she says she knew he was
bound for a future in music, like so many others
in her family.
It wasn’t long before most of Scott’s mornings
started out with a wake-up call from his
grandfather, Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr.,
directing him to report to the kitchen table
with his trumpet to perform “Bag’s Groove”
and other tunes. If he missed a note, his grandfather,
a folk singer and an important cultural
force in the Mardi Gras Indian community,
would sing the bar to Scott, who would play it
back until he got it right. The next morning,
the ritual would repeat.
The name Harrison is one of music royalty in
New Orleans. Scott’s mother has been a singer
all her life. His maternal grandmother played
piano and clarinet. His uncle is the acclaimed
saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr. And his aunt
Cherice Harrison-Nelson runs the Mardi Gras
Indian Hall of Fame, a cultural center devoted to
one of the most unique and influential elements
of the city’s heritage.
Soon after he got his start in music, Scott
began gigging regularly with Donald Harrison